PowerDraw for Mac

From Gabriel Zachmann:

Have you ever wished to just draw a few lines on the screen during your presentation? Or did you wish you could highlight a word or phrase or part of a drawing on your slides during your lecture? Maybe you even wanted a few blank slides so you could explain something in more detail?

Then PowerDraw is the tool for you.

It is particularly useful when giving presentations / lectures using a ModBook (this is a tablet MacBook).

Here is an overview of the features:

• Overdraw mode: while switched on, all mouse clicks and dragging are intercepted by PowerDraw to create line drawings. If overdraw mode is switched off, then only PowerDraw's buttons are active; all mouse events in other areas of the screen go to the application underneath, as ususal.
• Two buttons for stepping forward/backward in your presentation (this is particularly useful while overdraw mode is on).
• Buttons to skip to the next/previous slide, no matter how many animations there are.
• The GUI is fairly minimal, so as not to intrude too much; it is also quite efficient (hopefully), so that switching between drawing mode and click-through mode, and between different drawing colors is as quick as possible.
• PowerDraw remembers what you have drawn over each slide; so if you go back a slide, the drawings you have made there will be displayed again. And it does not matter whether you go back via PowerDraw's button, or via Powerpoints own user interface (e.g., backspace, right click, etc.)
• PowerDraw never intercepts keyboard events, so key clicks will always go to Powerpoint (or whatever application is in focus at the moment). This is a safety net. (Another reason is that I am often giving my lectures on a ModBook, so there is no keyboard at all [a ModBook is a tablet MacBook].)

Note that currently, PowerDraw can control only Powerpoint, not Keynote, and that it works only with monitor mirroring (i.e., Presenter's Tools won't work).

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